Two Thousand Years Ago

Two Thousand Years Ago

For unto us a child is born

In the stable a new baby enfolded in the arms

of his loving mother, honoured by oxen,

watched over by angels, greeted by the owl’s

hoot and the night hawk’s cry in the long cold night.

A shepherd boy brought his new lamb for the baby,

the Magi brought rich gifts for the infant king,

humble prince of peace who came to lead

us to the peace of our loving God.

The stars sang, the river nudged its stones

and woke the dreaming dragon flies,

soft breezes whispered among the olive trees,

every flower raised its fragile petals to the radiant sky,

all combined as one to join with the song of welcome

to the enchanting baby born this night of nights,

and to recite again the angelic greeting

‘Peace be to all men of good will.’

§§§§§§§§§

I talked to an old soldier, disfigured and lame, 

who fought for five long years in trenches

carpeted with mud, amidst the wire, beneath the gas, 

his young manhood devoured by pain and blood and fear.

‘Did you hate the Hun?’ I asked him.  ‘No,’  he said, 

‘for he was a man like me. Like me he fought 

for what he believed - his emperor, honour,

nation, that all might be strong and free.'

‘When at last you came home’ I said, ‘were you

full of joy,  you, the young proud hero?’

For a long moment he looked into the dying fire.

‘How could I be proud when all I did was to obey orders?

Where was the joy when all my mates were dead?

Closer then to my enemy than to my friend,

I found little peace in that war’s ending,

and little glory in a bitter victory.’

The old warrior slept, while I sat quietly in the dark night

and listened to the echo of sweet celestial voices ringing

once more down centuries of bitterness and cruel war.

And I remembered again those two great commandments, 

to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves, 

given that we might find his blessed inner peace 

revealed to us by a man born in a stable,

two thousand years ago.

Naomi

Just another day

Six sparrows sit atop a thick leaved bush,

like beige feathery candles on a Christmas  tree.  

Frozen to the spot I look at them 

as heads on one side they stare at me, 

neither haughty nor curious.

Until as if summoned by a soft far off bell 

they rise up over black iron spiked railings,

and wheel into the haze of a pallid noonday sun.

Up on the green along the edge of the cliff

a herring gull dances, stamping his feet

in ever turning circles, a winged Dervish

not whirling but tottering in the wet grass.

Greedy eyes gleaming, his beak stabs down

as the worms bore up towards the surface,

desperate to escape the mimetic flood

orchestrated by this plump Machiavellian bird.

At shoulder height a flock of pigeons flies

along the Promenade, an avian battering ram

of close laid feathers, dun and biscuit,

smoke grey,  bronze and iridescent blue.

Strong men blanche and leap for safety,

small children run screaming for mother,

while marooned in my wheel chair 

I swear at today’s inexorable pinioned progress.

The air is full of the shrill agonised screams 

of green parakeets hanging down side up 

from swaying wires and sharp edged guttering, 

and the hysterical barking of dogs 

ever eager to join the hilarious melée.

Only the black disdainful Promenade Cat,

whiskers quivering and anxious bushy tail twitching, 

abandons the affray for a quiet cushion and a piscine tea.

Just another ordinary December day 

in the long life of our genteel old seaside town

                                               Naomi                      

A Perilous Path

A perilous pathway

Look into the blue waters of the Med where sharks

and poisonous fishes swim, where black sea urchins

lurk and jellyfish sting the unwary travellers on their

perilous path south from Maghreb to Mezzogiorno.

There you will find a monstrous human graveyard,

for the sea gives not up its dead to the living, 

and already countless thousand souls are lost 

to the T ocean,  prey of avarice which fed

on the fears of terror stricken refugees who had

nowhere else to hide and no place else to go.

‘Rescue them?’ our leaders cried, ‘Even more 

will come, and of those who come, even more 

will die; we must not facilitate yet more deaths.’

But can we ever trust the sweet voiced serpent,

whose sharp fangs administer a deadly venom?

These are our brothers and our sisters who rest

deep beneath the smiling waves, supine on biers 

of rock and sand, where many more will gather

destroyed by the smug complacent righteousness 

of those now committed to abandon them.

There can be no resolution, no peace, until we

ourselves identify with fugitives and outcasts,

with children who are hungry, and mothers 

persecuted for their faith.  For are we not all

children beloved of the loving creator God?

Jesus said make the stranger welcome in your

home, and show love, not hate, to your enemies.

Thus our hope is founded upon the love of God 

made manifest in the life of Jesus, and in the love

we have for one another.    Amen,  so may it be.

            

                                                                         Naomi

Paul Nash : 4 Dark landscapes

“The Caterpillar Crater” 1917

South east of Ypres, the Caterpillar Ridge,

blown up by thirty tons of ammatol,

a thousand Germans dead but disappeared,

only a massive crater to mark their passing.

Green fields turned ochre by blood and mud,

every tree a broken trunk, every branch

a stunted limb, like a human body 

torn apart by unceasing heavy guns; 

trunks in serried rows, like crucifixes

souvenirs of an army dissolved away.

“Passchendaele Shell bursting” 1918

A man-tree leans back away from the blast, 

its hand with shattered fingers lifted high

against the blitz of brick and piercing shell

flung arching wide, a macabre fountain

sprung from a deep penetration of the earth,

an unholy union of Füllpuver and steel

The sky blotted out, the land is covered

with dirt and debris, trees wasted and bare,

a dark landscape broken and desolate,

reveal the artist’s unending despair.

“The Wire”  1918

Beneath a sky wide pall of noxious fumes 

stands erect a lonely bridegroom, a tree

castrated, splintered phallus wrapped 

in a deadly mantle woven from thick 

strands of entangled wire, barbs hungry 

for blood, symbols of pain and of despair.

Roots spread dry, like a beached octopus

trapped by broken boulders and foul waters,

the tree is captive to this killing ground,

left god-forsaken in its Stygian gloom. 

“We are Making a New World”  1918

Above the brick red, blood red horizon
the sun rises, enervated and white,

into a sky grey with shame, but its rays

touch the edges of the brightly dark hills

and highlight the forest of wasted trees.

Grass is tinged anew with a nascent light,

from the soft water of a crater pool

field mice drink again, children one day may 

play here, small birds sing again, but for now

nothing but an unresponsive emptiness.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Naomi


"The Wire" 

[This item is available  to share and reuse under the terms 
of the Imperial War Museum's Non Commercial Licence]

 Paul Nash  1918

A choice most cruel

A choice most cruel

What would you do

if you sat hour upon hour, day upon day,

beside the bed of one who begged you to find

an end to their misery and unending pain, but faith

and law were united, and mercy was overwhelmed?

If reason demands but law proscribes compassion,

and faith enjoins that God, the giver of life, alone

may take the broken body and failing spirit

to eternal rest, could you, would you

assist the loved one to die?

If all you are able to do 

is to pray, will you ask God to ease

 the terrible burden of exhaustion and fear 

the dying so often carry and, with a gentle dignity

and calm at last, to allow them to silently slip away?

How then would you feel?  Joy at the end of their

torturous journey or deep sadness that, at the

time of their choosing, there was neither 

means nor courage to walk with them 

to the edge of the abyss?

If reason and law and faith in a merciful 

God were to combine, then might we, as an act 

of pure love, say yes to the pleas of the loved one, 

and so go with them in peace to the gate

of the Kingdom of Love? 

Amen.  So may it be.

Naomi

The Mystery that is Love

The Face of God

We may not see the face of God nor hear his voice,

but we can delight in the wonders of this our world,

our living mirror of a sacred beauty that alone is his.

His voice is heard in the song of ten thousand birds 

and in a roaring waterfall; silent he moves in a breeze 

that riffles through the beach tree’s bronzed leaves.

In his almighty power he rides the skies in the eye

of the storm, yet like new kittens lying secure within

the circle of their mother’s paws, we may safely rest 

in the promise of his tenderness and silken strength.

God’s face invisible, God’s voice unknown, but 

Jesus becomes our paradigm of the loving God,

his teachings marking out our path to paradise,

for he brought to us God’s great commandment:

that we love Him and our neighbour as ourselves.

Tonight the magical stillness of a summer evening 

is broken only by the whispering of lazy waves

and the distant high pitched hoot of a tawny owl. 

Above the bay the full moon hangs softly bright

spreading a delicate path of silver across smoke

blue water, inviting us to look into a far horizon

which, with  Jesus as our guide, will some day 

be the end of our journey.  There, face to face 

at last with God, we may recognise the glorious 

ineffable Mystery that is the essence of his Love.

Naomi                                                   

My Friend Bill

Come, my friend, though you be lost

from my sight, walk now and talk with me. 

My mind’s eye sees you and my heart’s 

ear listens to you, as the same sea 

we both once watched caresses the sand 

at the edge of the Bay, while crying gulls

fly deep again into the copper bright horizon, 

to be absorbed like tendrils  of thin smoke 

disappeared into the kindly dark of evening.

Any man’s death, it was said, diminishes me;

but I know the spirit that lives in every good man

will enrich the lives of of all whom it touches.

My friend Bill was indeed a very good man,

a loyal and loving man whose pleasure

it was to build a raft of quiet friendship

upon which we all may safely sit 

until, we too set free, shall fly into those gentle

welcoming shadows and meet with God. 

Naomi